Ridgeline Mountains!

Ridgeline mountain style map for an upcoming novel, which I will link once it’s available for purchase!

So this is the first time I’ve done a full ridgeline mountain by hand without involving any mountain stamps. It’s not the first time I’ve done my mountains without involving stamps, but the it is the first example of this style of mountain in my portfolio. These ridgeline mountains were designed to really give a sense of the 3D space this continent occupies, along with the decision to make the “cut out” rivers in blue rather than simply inking them in. Finally, it is polished with some shading and light watercolor style color to imply the different biomes.

These decisions were made because it’s an adult-focused, more realistic fantasy world. I wanted to give the impression of a more intelligent cartographer using scientific knowledge or perhaps scrying to get a better view of how the world looked. (and there actually is a cartographer in the novel as a narrator!) Rather than just drawing “yes there is a mountain about here” illustrations. So this is decided due to the tech and knowledge level of the people within the story. Also the preferences of the author to have something that still resonated with the Game of Thrones fantasy style map but stood out as its own.

Since it’s going into a printed novel, it also looks awesome in black and white!